


i'll try to talk refined (for fear that you find out how i'm imaginin' you)

by poiregourmande



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), In Control with Kelsey (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Professor Shane Madej, Student Kelsey Impicciche, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 10:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21444766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poiregourmande/pseuds/poiregourmande
Summary: The first time Shane notices her, he doesn’t notice the jaunt in her step making her ponytail bounce, making her skirt ride up, never too high, just high enough to tease a fantasy. That comes later.The first time Kelsey notices him, she doesn’t see how tall he is, how his scholarly tweed jackets and knit cardigans conceal a pair of surprisingly strong arms who can throw you on a bed or hold you up against a wall. That comes later.
Relationships: Kelsey Impicciche/Shane Madej
Comments: 20
Kudos: 32





	i'll try to talk refined (for fear that you find out how i'm imaginin' you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mukemagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukemagic/gifts).

The first time Shane notices her, he doesn’t notice the jaunt in her step making her ponytail bounce, making her skirt ride up, never too high, just high enough to tease a fantasy. That comes later. 

The first time he notices her, he just sees her as the only student awake in his 8AM class, bright eyes, wide smile, who can answer all his questions and provide some of her own, until his class is nothing more than a one on one dialogue, with the occasional snore from one of her colleagues. 

The first time Kelsey notices him, she doesn’t see how tall he is, how his scholarly tweed jackets and knit cardigans conceal a pair of surprisingly strong arms who can throw you on a bed or hold you up against a wall. That comes later. 

The first time she notices him, she only sees how young he is compared to her other professors, but still older than her or her classmates — his facial hair without a hint of grey, but wrinkles around his eyes that suggest a good sense of humor. A passion for his subject, for teaching. 

She stays after class, long after her bleary-eyed classmates filed out of the room, sitting on a first row desk kicking her legs as they carry on their discussion about early American cinema. 

This is only the first of a long series of discussions to which Kelsey brings her bright and fresh ideas and Shane his experience and knowledge. They’re well balanced; sometimes she manages to present something he’d never considered; sometimes he dispels some of her more naive ideas. 

What was simply an elective soon becomes Kelsey’s favorite class, and through in-depth conversations after every class, after reading through the whole list of Pr. Madej’s recommendations, she realizes this is more interesting to her than her psych major — which she only chose because her parents kept pestering her. 

***

“So, tell me again how you turned your whole life around for a professor?” Zach asks over drinks, a few days into the following semester. 

“For a — Zach! That’s got nothing to do with him! I changed my major because this is what I’m into!”

“Mhmm, and if I check your schedule right now I won’t find four Madej classes?”

“He’s — he just happened to give the classes I need!”

Zach just sips his beer, eyeing her infuriatingly. 

It’s true, though. She doesn’t have a crush on Professor Madej. She just thinks he’s brilliant, and knowledgeable, and hilarious, and has a knack for making people who lived centuries ago feel real and relatable. And he’s got excellent taste in movies. 

That’s all. 

***

It’s a great semester. Kelsey works hard and learns a lot — she loves the classes so much that soon, doing her homework isn’t enough to get her fix, and she asks Shane for extra credit work. 

“Do you have any hobbies outside of this?” Shane asks pointedly, but the corner of his mouth twitches, amused. 

“Do you?” Kelsey shoots back, and she can see it landed, because he grins self-deprecatingly. 

“You know,” he says, “I’ve been thinking. I’m looking for a new TA for next semester — Sara graduates at the end of the year. Maybe you should look into it?”

Kelsey feels blood rush to her cheeks — the room is warm, she tells herself, they always crank the heater up in this building. “I would love to!” she says, in a high-pitched tone she wouldn’t recognize as her own. 

“I think we’d make a good team,” he says warmly. “I mean, at this point you probably know my classes as well as I do,” he jokes. 

Kelsey’s hands are clammy. Her mind swims at the thought of how much more often she’d get to see Professor Madej. 

Okay, so maybe Zach’s right. 

***

Kelsey used to love summer. Theme parks, swimming, camping trips, and more s’mores that she can count. 

This one, not so much. 

It just seems like a waste of time to go back home when she could start planning for next semester with Pr. Madej, when she could get a heads start on the readings while the library is not too full. 

She counts down the days until she goes back to school and allows herself to email him only twice, to ask for reading recommendations and tell him about a documentary she watched. She has to remind herself that he’s on vacation too, when he doesn’t answer immediately. 

September comes in with such relief Kelsey almost gets whiplash, and the spring in her steps comes back as she stops by Shane’s office before she even goes to her dorm. (It’s on her way, she tells him.)

(It’s not.)

They quickly fall into a routine, over the semester, drafting syllabi and grading papers. Kelsey’s only supposed to help for a few hours a week, but she keeps forgetting to leave, too engrossed in the work (and in Shane’s conversation, okay,  _ shut up _ ). At first Shane tries to make her leave (“the school doesn’t pay overtime, y’know,”) but she smiles and keeps working and goes, “I’m having fun.”

So eventually Shane stops fighting and starts bringing her dinner from the tiny Thai restaurant across campus. They often eat it cold because they get into long, fiery debates and completely forget the food. Kelsey comes back to her dorm room near midnight, exhausted but blissful, so often that her roommate YB is convinced she’s got a secret boyfriend. She’s wrong, of course she is, but why is Kelsey blushing so hard?

***

One night they’re grading papers about the Wild West and the Gold Rush, and Kelsey groans. 

“Ugh, if you wanna quote Red Dead Redemption 2, at least get your facts straight! It’s like they didn’t even play the game!”

She looks up to find Shane staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. 

Kelsey’s cheeks heat up and she looks away. “Sorry. I’m a — guess I can’t deny it now — I’m a huge nerd. Video games, and comic books, and superheroes — I’m just gonna shut up now.”

“No!” Shane hurries to reassure her, his hand shooting forward to rest on her arm, for half a second before he realizes and takes it away. “I mean, it’s my favourite game — I can play for days on end.”

“So we do have hobbies outside of class,” Kelsey teases. 

“Guess so,” Shane chuckles, and is it Kelsey’s imagination or are his cheeks slightly reddened? “Maybe we could play it sometime?”

“I’d like that,” Kelsey says. 

That night is one of the rare nights where Kelsey goes home early — the air in Shane’s office is too thick with her own silly hopes (he’s a professor, of course he wasn’t coming on to her, she needs to get a grip!) and she prefers ducking out before she does something she might regret. 

The following day, she’s determined to go over to his office to grade papers  _ and nothing more _ . No dinner, no chit-chat, no staying after hours, and especially,  _ no getting her hopes up _ . 

Shane didn’t get the memo. 

She walks into his office greeted by the irresistible aroma of Tom Yum Goong, already salivating before she even sits down. 

“Oh, um, actually, Professor Madej?”

His eyes are warm on her when he looks up from his laptop, almost burning. 

“Please, Kelsey, we’ve known each other for a while now, why don’t you call me Shane?” 

“Oh, um. Sure, Profes — Shane!” Her cheeks are burning. “Sorry, I think it’s gonna take me a while to get used to this.”

Shane gives a warm smile. “No rush. So, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

Kelsey looks at the pile of essays on the desk, the fragrant boxes of takeout, the welcoming look on Prof — sorry,  _ Shane’s _ face. One more evening can’t do much harm, right? She can hardly let him eat all of this by himself. 

“Nothing,” she says, pulling a chair to his desk and a red pen out of her bag. 

***

_ One more evening can’t do much harm,  _ she said. 

She’s sitting in her dorm room the following night, early after dinner, trying to work on an essay and thoroughly unable to focus. 

She misses the scratch of Shane’s pen on the page. The low hum of the fan in his office. The spicy sweet aroma of take out. The way they always seem to need a break at the same time and can slip into easy conversation until they forget the hour. 

Frowning at her own bad life choices, she slips on her shoes and shoves her laptop in her bag. 

Shane barely raises an eyebrow when she plops into the second chair in his office ( _ her _ chair, she’d come to see it) and starts working on her essay. 

The words come easier to her now, she can breathe without the feeling that something’s missing nagging at the back of her head. 

“Ilnyckyj’s paper?” Shane asks after a while. 

Kelsey nods and Shane grins. “Not to, um, give you an unfair advantage, but have you considered this?” He heaves a large tome on the desk, pushes it towards her. 

It’s almost a whole hour later, and they’re locked in a heated discussion, the room now dark except for their laptops screens, Shane with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, jacket draped over the back of his chair. 

“I should have used voice-to-text,” Kelsey teases. “My essay would be done by now.”

“Don’t tell Ilnyckyj — wouldn’t be fair to the other students.”

_ There’s a lot going on here that’s not fair to the other students, _ Kelsey thinks, but she just smiles, steals a spring roll off his plate, and goes back to her paper. 

Kelsey wakes up with the first rays of sunshine, and it’s a while before she realizes where she is. 

Hunched over a pile of essays, a tweed jacket draped over her shoulders, in Shane’s office. 

_ Fuck! _

Shane’s nowhere to be seen, which she can’t decide is a good thing or not. At least she can slip out without having to face him. She’s embarrassed, of course, but something in her heart practically purrs at the idea of him taking care of her while she slept. 

She runs her fingers through her hair to try and look like — well, like she didn’t spend all night sleeping in a desk chair in her professor’s office. It’s a lost cause, so she puts it up in a messy bun with a scrunchie found at the bottom of her purse. 

She’s draping the jacket over the back of Shane’s chair when the door opens. Her heart skips a beat as she whirls around. No time to hide. She’s gonna get caught having spent the night in a professor’s office, she’s gonna get kicked out, Shane’s gonna lose his job —

“Good morning,” Shane intones, walking in with two cups of coffee and a bag of bagels. 

All anxiety leaves Kelsey with a relieved sigh, so suddenly she almost gets whiplash. 

“Oh, it’s you!”

Shane smiles warmly. “It’s still my office, isn’t it?” He cranes his head like he’s checking the name on the door. “Why, who did you think it was?”

Kelsey blushes and stammers, trying not to notice how good his forearms look with his shirtsleeves rolled up like that. And his hands!  _ Stay on topic, Kels! _

“N-no one!”

Shane gives a sad smile and pulls out Kelsey’s chair, gestures at her to sit down. He sits in front of her, hands flat on his desk. 

“Kelsey. You know we haven’t done anything wrong, yeah?”

There’s a lot hanging in Shane’s words. 

Kelsey’s brain helpfully supplies  _ yet _ , and she can’t help blushing even deeper. “I know —” her voice is embarrassingly high-pitched — “it’s just… Well it wouldn’t look good, right? A student spending the night in a professor’s office?”

Shane sighs. “I should have —” he trails off, shaking his head. “Kelsey, I must apologize. I think that I may have overstepped, crossed some boundaries, thinking there was something here…”

“What if there is?” Kelsey blurts out, emboldened by her short night and the desperate look in Shane’s eyes. 

“What?”

“I tried to stay away, Shane.” It’s the first time she called him by his first name unprompted. “I told myself nothing good could come from this…”

“Kelsey…” Her name is a plea on his lips and it’s never sounded better. 

She gets up to sit on his desk, holds out a hand to him. Shane looks like he’s trying to find a reason not to, but she doesn’t miss the way his eyes trail up her legs to the expense of skin below her skirt. She smiles warmly, not a challenge, but an invitation. 

Shane takes her hand. 

She laces their fingers together, enjoys the way they fit so perfectly, squeezes his hand and relishes in the start of something new. 

When she looks up, the look in his eyes, hesitant but fond, tells her all she needs to know. 

“Can I kiss you, Professor?”


End file.
